--- January 15,
2001 - Letter from twenty-seven area groups to Secretary of the
Environment Department, Pete Maggiore, calling for the cessation of
nuclear waste disposal at "Area G" landfill and formal closure
of the site, as required by law.

It's Growing. And It's Ours Forever

Larger than WIPP (the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, New Mexico)

Expected to recieve 54,000 drums' worth more waste each year, mostly
from nuclear weapons production and testing

Slated to expand in size indefinitely -- two other mesas are also targeted
for dump sites

No external oversight by any regulatory agency

Most of this waste production is entirely unnecessary

And just where is all this nuclear waste coming from?
Almost all of it is coming from nuclear weapons programs. Most people do
not know that these programs have grown tremendously in recent years, and
are now much larger than they were on average during the Cold War, even
after correcting for inflation.

Weapons design and testing has begun again -- here. Production
of plutonium bomb cores has begun -- here. A second plutonium plant is planned -- here.
Many more tons of plutonium are needed for the bomb factories -- here. Huge
new facilities for weapons testing and for novel kinds of nuclear processing -- which
will produce even more waste -- are planned -- here.

So the Department of Energy (DOE) and the University of
California (UC, which makes millions of dollars operating the lab and the
dump) assume you don't mind them burying most of the waste here, with a
smaller amount going to WIPP.